


Multiverse theory

by gaps42



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pointless fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaps42/pseuds/gaps42
Summary: There are countless parallel universes which comprise everything that has ever and will ever exist, and Eleven and Max find each other in every one.A collection of elmax one-shot requests. Latest chapter: "Seeing someone read a book you love is seeing a book recommend a person." Max can't help but be intrigued by the mysterious girl who is always one step ahead of her in discovering the books worth reading in the tiny Hawkins library.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Actually posting a requested fic instead of obsessively updating Constellations??? Talk about AU  
> Seriously getting requests makes me scream in gay and I love it, I just take a bit longer with them. Thank you for your patience to anyone who's requested something from me, this is where I'm going to post prompts so that there aren't 11 million obnoxious one-shots floating around the elmax tag. It's kind of ironic that the first chapter of a fic called "multiverse theory' is canon compliant, but it's the AU where the Duffer brothers let them be gay I guess aslhshalsjgjlahsy;af I like to think of it in the same universe as How to fly and More than dealing, but you don't need to read those to understand I don't think. This is for the absolute angel @gayforjane, who wanted older established elmax bein cute, thank you for the prompt!!! Fair warning this is sappy even for me so I'm sorry or you're welcome depending on how yall feel

Leaning her shoulder against the old wooden doorframe, Max lifts one hand in with raised eyebrows when the cluster of giggling teenagers sneak shy glances back at her. “Don't be a stranger,” she calls, and her chest warms when their faces brighten as they wave enthusiastically back at her.

Smiling, she steps back inside the shop and pulls the door closed after her. As she turns the sign hanging in the window to _closed_ she hears a low, throaty humming drift from the towering bookshelves and her heart picks up speed automatically. Her smile turns from fond to dreamy without her permission as she slips her hands into her pockets and wanders into the stacks, following the voice barely audible over the recorded music piping through the store. Like a moth to a flame she finds the source at the very back of the shop, and she wonders, a very different warmth in her chest which still manages to melt her bones and send her heart fluttering like a dragonfly's wings even after twenty years of waking up to this every day, if she'll ever be able to stop staring like the pining fourteen-year-old she still was inside when faced with visions like this.

She allows herself a long, indulgent moment of watching the woman balanced precariously on a ladder sorting through books on the top shelf before she steps forward to stand right beneath her, blue eyes shining with mischief. “I can see up your skirt.”

Jane starts, clamping her hands to her backside like she's trying to keep it from falling off before she feels the bluejeans beneath her palms and relaxes. Max grins and wraps her arms around her wife's thighs, pressing her chin against the soft curve of Jane's hip as the other woman ducks to frown down at her, hands still covering her bottom. “I'm not wearing a skirt,” Jane says, eyebrows furrowed.

“Made you look, though,” Max teases, and Jane's frown deepens as her hands finally leave her backside to grip the top of the ladder. “Pity for me, really. I've got to buy you some skirts.”

Jane rolls her eyes and reaches for the clipboard she'd hastily dropped on top of the shelf of books in front of her. “Are the kids gone?”

“Yep.” Max pops the _p_ , waggling her eyebrows as Jane looks over her clipboard and pretends she doesn't see out of the corner of her eye. “We're all alone.”

“Good, you can help me finish inventory,” Jane says, and she can't quite hide the slight upturn of her lips when Max whines against her thigh. Despite every attempt from the universe to prevent it, she's earned her share of laugh lines along her mouth and eyes over the years, and Max cherishes each one.

“Don't we have employees for that?” Max complains, and her besotted heart throws itself against her ribcage hopelessly when one side of Jane's mouth finally does twitch up into her little half-smile. “Come on, group always runs way later than it should, let's just go home.”

“Because you always let the kids hang out after,” Jane murmurs, breath-taking eyes magnified owlishly as they sweep over the spreadsheet on her clipboard from behind her glasses.

Max huffs into her jeans. They run several book clubs revolving around LBGT+ literature out of the little independent bookstore they own together, and Max seems to always find herself letting the teenagers at the youth-focused group crowd around her and demand her educated opinion on whatever book they had just dissected instead of kicking them out of the shop after the hour is up. “I have a lot of opinions,” she grumbles.

Jane grins, and even with her face half-buried in her wife's outer thigh Max is dazzled. “Tell me about it,” she says quietly, and Max squeezes her legs with a mock-frown. “Or don't, we'll never get out of h- Max!”

Max has tightened her arms around her wife's legs and pulled her off the ladder, spinning her around to generate enough momentum to keep her in the air. The redhead stumbles a bit, long hair flying around her face as she attempts to not look like she's struggling as much as she is, and she sets Jane down much less gently than she had intended, but Jane is laughing, wrapping her arms around Max's neck as she steps into her body as gracefully as if she'd been expecting it all along. Max leans their foreheads together, back to staring again as Jane snickers and wiggles her huge wire glasses back up the bridge of her nose from where they'd fallen lopsided across her flushed face.

“Max,” she says again, her reproachful tone belied by the wide grin stretching across her face.

“Yep, that's me,” Max says, reaching up to worshipfully run her fingers through her wife's mess of curls. Jane's hair had turned grey all at once, unlike Max's streaks of silver through her still-vibrant red, and she had left her slicked-back punk look behind years ago to let her curls fly freely around her beautiful face like a rain cloud. “Who are you again?”

Jane rolls her eyes theatrically. “I'm doing inventory,” she says, but she can't quite hide the upwards quirk of one side of her mouth as she moves to pull away.

“Hey, not so fast, mystery girl, guess what?” Max wraps her arms hastily around her wife's waist, pulling their bodies together before Jane can turn hers away. Jane arches an eyebrow, endless dark eyes dancing with amusement as their noses brush together, and Max forgets whatever inconsequential joke she'd been about to make. “I love you.”

Jane smiles, but meets her glazed eyes seriously. “I know.”

Max groans, and Jane's body shakes against hers with mischievous, silent laughter. “Why did I let Wheeler show you Star Wars?”

“You like Star Wars,” Jane smiles, balancing her arms on Max's shoulders like they're slow-dancing at a middle school prom. “You have that quote on matching wine glasses for us.”

“Yeah, but when you watched it with him at that impressionable young age he clearly fucked up your interpretation of it,” Max complains, stomach swooping foolishly as Jane snickers. “I'm obviously Han Solo in this scenario.”

Jane snorts, raising an eyebrow. “Sure, Max.”

“Hey, I sure am,” Max protests, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice even as she attempts to fix her giggling wife with a glare. “And you're Princess Leia. Obviously. Badass rebel fighter with the Force who was a significant part of my sexual awakening.”

Jane gives her adorable little snort-laugh and buries her face in Max's neck, shoulders shaking with her mirth. Max pulls her closer, revelling in the feeling of her in her arms, warm and safe and burrowing into Max's own body despite her teasing laughter. They start to sway slightly, bodies rocking with the faint acoustic music still playing through the shop. “Is that why you keep making the kids read Star Wars books when you run out of happy novels with gay characters?” Jane says, smiling against her neck as she lets herself be rocked in her wife's embrace.

“Yeah, that and everyone in Star Wars is gay, anyway,” Max says, and grins at Jane's new burst of laughter. She buries her nose in Jane's wild curls, closing her eyes. “It shouldn't be this hard to find them new material every month,” she whispers.

Jane hums, wrapping her arms around Max's neck to weave her fingers through long red tresses. “It's easier than when we were their age,” she says softly.

“Yeah, but that's not good enough,” Max says, tightening her arms around her wife's waist reflectively as if Jane was going to disappear if she didn't hold her close enough. “We have an entire store full of books we've been collecting for more than twenty years and we still don't have enough stories about LGBT characters who don't die for a monthly book club?”

“You know that's not the only reason the kids come,” Jane murmurs, running her fingers through Max's hair soothingly. “They have a community. Off the internet.”

“A community who keeps reading the same ten books,” Max grumbles. She runs her fingers up her wife's spine, reverent. “I wanted us to be a place I would've wanted to go to when I was a kid. You know, somewhere safe and positive where you could be yourself, didn't you want that?”

“I had you,” Jane says simply. She draws back to lean their foreheads together, tilting her head to kiss Max softly, and Max drowns in her, the simple, light brush of their lips flooding her whole body with warmth. Max keeps her eyes closed as her wife draws back from the kiss, Jane hovering close enough that her breath puffs against the other woman's still slightly-parted lips as she nuzzles their noses together.

“I see those kids with you,” Jane says softly, the stone on her engagement ring catching in Max's tresses as she cards her fingers through the heavy waves. “Talking to you, being around you and your fire and your happiness is more reassuring to them than any book.”

Max opens her eyes dazedly, shaking her head with utter disbelief as she gets lost in her staring again. “You make me happy.”

“I know,” Jane smiles, glowing in the soft lights of the bookstore. “You make me happy, too.” Her smile turns mischievous as she gazes at Max beneath half-lowered lashes, and Max sways on the spot out of beat to the music. “And they also all have little crushes on you.”

Max rolls her eyes, trapping her snickering wife in her arms and tickling her lower back when she squirms to get away. “You think everyone has a little crush on me.”

“They do,” Jane laughs, wiggling very distractingly against her body as she tries to avoid Max's dancing fingers. “You are very crushable.”

“That's comforting, coming from a woman who can literally crush me with her mind,” Max teases. She locks her elbows around her wife's back to line up their bodies, smiling dreamily at Jane's mock-glare, and she leans in to press their lips together for a long, heavenly moment.

Jane wriggles one hand between their bodies to cup Max's cheek, stroking the curve with her thumb as she eases away from their kiss. “I love you,” she says breathlessly.

“I love you, too,” Max sighs, eyelashes fluttering as she struggles between staring worshipfully at her wife and leaning in to kiss her again.

Jane frowns, and Max dips in to kiss it away. “I thought you wanted to be Han Solo,” Jane mumbles against her barrage of light kisses.

“Mmmnph?” It takes Max a few more greedy kisses to process what she's said. “Oh. Right, 'I know.' Can we go home now?” She leans in and kisses Jane hard, hands moving over her wife's back eagerly as her head spins so dizzily they stumble backwards a step.

Jane grins into her deep, messy kiss, but draws back enough to fix her with a pointed look, the hand cradling her cheek dropping to twist in her hair. “After all that, suddenly you don't care?” she teases. “You still have to help with inventory, Han Solo or not.”

“Oh, we are _not_ doing inventory,” Max mutters, and tugs her wife against her with both hands on the laughing woman's backside to kiss her deeply again.

Jane hums into her mouth, smiling so wide she can barely return Max's needy kisses. “Hnmm. Next time – N – Next time you start complaining about me using the Han Solo wine glass... Hmmng, I'm bringing this up.”

“Guess I'd just rather be your wife instead,” Max mumbles, nuzzling Jane's upturned nose adoringly as she breathes the words against her lips, and she tangles her fingers in soft grey curls and crushes their lips together.

Even after decades of Jane's kisses, long after teenage hormones and first-time thrills, Max's mind still clouds utterly, helplessly, at Jane's lips on hers, and she's forgotten where they are and what they were talking about and everything except for the woman pressed against her by the time her wife pulls back, gazing at her with dazed eyes shining like the sun. “Okay, we can go home,” Jane says softly.

Jane's eyes take up Max's whole world, only partially because she's so close their noses are flattened against each other. “Okay,” Max breathes, and weaves their fingers together to begin pulling her wife towards the door.

“Max,” Jane laughs, a bit breathless, and digs her heels into the worn carpet. “We have to lock up.”

“What, the bosses going to get mad the whole closing duties list wasn't done?” Max says, raising her eyebrows as she leans her weight back on her heels, tugging her wife's hand hopefully. “I won't tell.”

Jane rolls her eyes and turns, tossing a reproachful look over her shoulder as she leads the other woman through the bookshelves. “We just have to secure the float and set the alarm. Then we'll go.”

“Jaaaaaane,” Max complains, following her wife through the shelves willingly even as she pouts. “We've been here all day, and you're so pretty. Come on.”

“Safety first, we're not stupid,” Jane says, slipping her hand away as she pads around the front desk. “We're married, taking an extra minute isn't going to take away from forever.”

“Oh, yeah, talking about loving you forever's going to make me _more_ patient about getting you home,” Max mumbles under her breath, but Jane's head is tilted in her curious way as she rifles through the wads of cash in the register, and the too-big sweater which neither of them can remember who owned first hangs off her graceful shoulder to showcase her sharp collarbone, and her eyes are unnaturally large in her ridiculous glasses, and Max thinks, _that's my wife_ , and then everything slows and she's back to staring again.

Jane doesn't look up until she's done locking everything away, but her eyes warm when she finds Max's already focused on her, and Max feels that warmth down her her curling toes as she realizes Jane is staring, too. “Let's go home,” Jane says softly, holding out her hand.

Max takes it, holding her eyes as she flicks the lights, and they walk to the door together by the sunset glowing through the window.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An actual AU!!! This takes place in the Steven Universe world, a reimagining of 'Last One Out of Beach City' with El as Pearl and Max a The Mystery Girl. For anyone who doesn't watch the show, Steven Universe is about a boy who is half-human and half-alien and his adventures figuring out his powers and finding his place between two worlds, the humans and the Crystal Gems. The aliens are gemstone beings, and Pearls have a really heart-breaking story which I won't spoil you for except that El's really particular about her full name because Pearls don't have any defining name outside of who they belong to as far as we know in the show so she took centuries unlearning being "just a Pearl' (plus I'm weak for Max calling her Ellie ahslfjagdgfjsljfj;lj). The humans seem to just... accept that they live with aliens, at least in Beach City, which is why Max, who lives a town over, is so cool with her so fast. I hope that's enough info to understand the story, when I have more time on the internet I'll come expand on the explanation if you need me to and answer any questions!!!  
> Also I know she takes off the outfit before she meets The Mystery Girl but Bad Pearl LITERALLY has the same outfit as punk!El and it was all I could see when El got her make-over so I couldn't resist

Moving her hips absently to the music, Max takes a long sip of her beer and tries not to look too bored. Her friends had begged her to meet them at this concert for a band she's never heard of and still isn't sure she remembers the name of, assuring her that this type of music, whatever it was, was about the  _experience_ , but, surrounded by enthusiastic revelers thrashing much more emphatically than she feels the laid-back groove of the music calls for, she thinks she would have had a more positive experience that night if she'd stayed home in her pyjamas like she'd been planning to.

She's just raising her beer to her mouth for something to do with her hands, elbow pointed aggressively out of her personal space towards a group of men suspiciously dancing closer and closer, when a pale rainbow of light fills her vision. A woman has slipped through the writhing crowd to stand right in front of her, impossibly graceful in the teeming mob of bodies around them, her coloring almost gradient as it fades between pearly-white skin to pastel pink hair swept back like a wave on the ocean. She's thin and lithe like a ballet dancer, toes pointed outwards like she's about to leap into the air even as she stands preternaturally still in the jostling mob, and although her iridescently-pale skin and inhumanly-wide eyes should be the most out-of-place thing about her, her high-waisted jeans and the black blazer she wears, collar popped around her slim throat, are more jarring on her, as if she's wearing a costume. She blinks her huge doe eyes and smiles hopefully, glowing like a prism refracting sunlight so close Max's eyes burn a bit in the proximity, and Max almost ends up with her beer down her white crop top.

"Hello," the iridescent woman says, and holds out her hand.

Max blinks, disoriented, and looks down at the hand outstretched politely towards her. The woman's skin almost shimmers in the late afternoon sunlight, a hint of every color playing off the surface as she moves, and Max thinks she sees an impossible undertone of pale blue as she stares much longer than is socially acceptable. Her friends had told her about the strange band of aliens who lived by the beach in the next town and mostly kept to themselves except to save the humans from peril, but until this moment she'd thought the term  _alien_  had been hyperbole. "Uh," she tries to say, and it is only then that she realized she still has her can of beer tilted against her gaping mouth. She blushes, fumbling a bit as she tries to decide which hand should be doing what before she finally manages to slide one palm against the woman's. She's not sure what she'd been expecting the woman to feel like, but her stomach erupts in a flurry of butterflies when she feels the warm, delicate hand grip hers almost nervously and jerk it up and down like she'd taken a seminar on shaking hands but never had the opportunity to try it out. "Hi," Max says breathlessly, because she'd made the mistake of looking from their joined hands to the woman's dark eyes, as beautiful and mysterious as the ocean, and the butterflies have found their way into her lungs. "I'm Max."

"Max," the woman repeats, tilting her head like she's turning the word over in her mind, and then she seems to come back to herself and blushes. Her pale cheeks heat up with a soft blue tint, and it's Max's turn to tilt her head in wonder. "I am Pearl Facet-11 UC-XI."

Max raises her eyebrows, but the woman stares back at her unblinkingly. They're still holding hands, which she's not eager to point out in case the other woman tries to draw back. "So... Pearl?"

The woman scowls, stunningly terrifying. "No. Not  _a_  Pearl, Pearl Facet-11 UC-XI."

Max smiles, somehow utterly baffled and enchanted at the same time. "Okay. But what do your friends call you, for short?"

The woman tilts her head again, and Max thinks to herself that she feels the world tilt with it before she stuffs the thought down with an internal roll of her eyes. "For short?"

"Yeah." Max raises the hand not gripping the other woman's to scratch the back of her neck shyly, until she realizes she's still holding her beer and ends up wiping the sweating can against her already-sweating skin. "Like, my name's Maxine, but that's awful so my friends call me Max. It's a shorter, easier-to-say version of my name, a nickname. Do you have one of those?"

The woman's eyes widen curiously, and Max feels blissfully weightless under her relentless gaze. "No. How do I get one?"

Max grins helplessly. "Um. You can just... Start calling yourself something, if you want. Or someone can shorten your name. Like -" She pauses, trying to remember the algebraic sequence the woman had given her. "You said eleven, right? You could be El, or Ellie. That's pretty." Stupidly, she blushes, even though calling this ethereal being  _pretty_  even laterally is the least bizarre part of this conversation.

The woman lights up, the blue flush creeping down her neck. "Ellie."

"Okay, Ellie. Nice to meet you." She shakes their joined hands again without thinking, lost in the woman's - Ellie's - doe eyes. Ellie does draw her hand back this time once it stops moving, and although her stomach drops in disappointment she has to wipe the sweat off her palm onto the flannel tied around her hips, so she understands. "You like this band?" she adds hastily, hoping to keep Ellie's attention.

"I don't know them," Ellie says simply. "My family made me come. I like the color of your hair. It's pretty."

Max grins, sure that her cheeks match the  _pretty_  color of her hair under Ellie's scrutiny. "Thanks. I like yours, too. How do you get it that color?"

"My appearance is just a conscious manifestation of light," Ellie says with a shrug, gazing at Max with her beautiful doe eyes as if she's commenting on something no more serious than the weather.

Max laughs, but it comes out as more of a high-pitched squeak as the butterflies in her lungs take off furiously. "Yeah, I know how that is," she says, and lifts her beer to her lips to hide her wide, enamored smile as Ellie blinks at her, serious eyes clouding with confusion. Ellie's brow furrows, and Max watches the wrinkles form on her perfect, shimmering forehead with an intoxication very separate from the small amount of beer she's managed to consume. "You from around here?" she adds, once she's used the excuse of the beer to swallow the sudden excess of saliva in her mouth.

Ellie nods, still looking at her curiously. "Yes. I've lived here for six thousand years. I saved your planet and your species before humans had even settled here."

Max sputters the sip of beer she'd been taking, and her eyes water painfully, both from the bubbles in her nose and the manifestation of otherworldly light in front of her. Ellie looks like a soft pastel rainbow in her blurred vision, and she has to take a careful step backwards to stop her knees from giving out beneath her. "Oh yeah?" she says, once she's gotten enough air back in her lungs to speak. She knows she has a foolish grin on her face, but her still-hazy eyes flick to Ellie's slightly-parted lips and she can't bring herself to care. "Well, thanks for that. In fact -" She ducks her head and grubs around in her jeans pocket before she can think better of it. "I'd love to hear about it sometime." She avoids Ellie's entrancing gaze purposefully as she bends over to scribble her phone number onto the corner of a notebook page, but she's still blushing furiously by the time she holds the scrap out towards the pink-haired woman.

Ellie takes it hesitantly, but Max's fluttering stomach drops when the alien's face falls as she reads it. "Oh. A code." She looks up abruptly to meet Max's eyes, and the butterflies are back so suddenly she feels like she might float off the ground. "Are these your house coordinates?"

Max runs a sweaty hands through her hair, half-seriously considering whether she can get away with dragging Ellie to her motorcycle to show her her housing coordinates right now. "It's a phone number," she smiles. "You call or text it to talk to me."

"Oh." Ellie tilts her head, considering. "I don't have a phone. Do I need one to use your phone number?"

"Yeah, you call a phone with another phone," Max says, trying to hide her disappointment with a kind smile. "What do you usually use to talk to humans?"

"I don't," Ellie says simply, doe eyes wide and earnest as she holds Max's gaze. Before Max has had time to recover, if she could ever recover at all, Ellie perks up and glances behind her through the crowd. "I think Facet-1 8XM has a communication device. I'll ask if they're compatible." And she turns on her toe like a ballerina and disappears into the crowd as quickly as she'd appeared.

Max blinks, feeling as if she'd just been forcibly woken from a wonderful, vivid dream. She sways slightly in place, giddy, but as a stranger dances into the spot Ellie had just occupied she starts to come back to herself and her stomach drops with disappointment. After the most bizarre, enchanting five-minute conversation of her life she's left with no contact information or certainty that Ellie wants her to contact at all, and if the comment about being six thousand years old isn't an exaggeration Ellie might not think to try to find her again until long after she's too old to go to rock concerts. Half-heartedly she scans the writhing crowd for iridescent skin and pink hair, but she finds nothing otherworldly in the mob and settles back onto her heels to take a long swig of beer, the world around her much more colorless than she remembers.

Just as she's trying to work up a way to ask her friends casually about the aliens they'd mentioned who lived by the beach, her phone buzzes in her pocket. Her hands are still so sweaty she almost drops it three times before she gets a solid enough grip on it to swipe it open.

_Dear Max,_

_This is Ellie (Pearl Facet-11 UC-XI) to whom you provided your phone number eight minutes ago. Facet-5 8XM does indeed have a compatible communication device and has allowed me use of it for "texting" your phone number, so please return your written communication to this sequence of numbers. We have to leave the concert to battle extraterrestrial forces, but I hope to see you again soon. I don't speak to humans very often, but after our conversation I am beginning to understand the appeal. I'm glad I became a criminal to save the Earth six thousand years ago when you smile at me._

_Sincerely,_

_Ellie (Pearl Facet-11 UC-XI)_

If Max had been unsure about the existence of extraterrestrial beings before, she has no doubt in her mind now, as she glimpses in Ellie's words heavenly, otherworldly beauty she'd never even dreamed of before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Anon who requested alien!El and human!Max. I hope you like it!!! I have about 30 seconds left on the computer but I'll answer comments as soon as I'm back!!!<3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for @gayforjane, who wanted a library au!!! I realized after I wrote this that you might have meant them being librarians or something so if this isn't what you wanted I can write that too ashlifgshdfl;gh  
> This is set in a universe where the timeline is the same but El doesn't have powers and there's no Hawkins lab, so Max moves in 1984 and befriends the party but none of them know El. I don't have a solid backstory for El but all you need to know is that Hopper adopted her and she doesn't know the party yet!!!

Beaming like he's showcasing a new species he just discovered, Dustin yanks yet another book off the shelf and adds it to his dangerously-tilting pile of books cradled in his arms. “Oh, you've gotta read this one! It's a classic.”

“Is it about a teenage boy who discovers he's the most special boy in the world and goes on adventures to save the galaxy from peril?” Max says with her best bored voice, flicking the peeling edge of the sticker on a book on the shelf she'd leaning on.

Dustin frowns at her. She should probably feel bad for her sass when he's clearly so excited about the books he's showing her, but every single novel in his precarious tower of recommendations is exactly what she'd described and she can't bear the thought of spending another moment of her precious summer reading the same story with a different character name thrown in. It's not that she doesn't like reading – her vocabulary and comprehension has been grades above her age group since she'd started getting report cards, let alone surpassing her presumptuous new friends in Hawkins, thank you very much – it's that she loves reading so much that she's read the same story a thousand times more than it takes before it starts getting boring, and all she wants is an adventure she can actually care about. In her old town the library had five floors, so packed with shelves upon shelves of new books to devour she could get lost in the stacks for an entire day and not even explore a full level of the building, and she has to admit she was a touch discouraged when Dustin had dragged her to the fantasy section and it had only spanned a row and a half. There were a lot of adjustments to be made in moving to a small town, and she likes to think she's been settling in as well as can be expected, but the one adjustment she refuses to make is to the expanse of her imagination.

“You asked for sci-fi/fantasy,” Dustin says with annoyance in his voice. He tries to make a sarcastic sweeping gesture towards the shelves, but he remembers the books in his arms just in time and stumbles around comically trying to rebalance them in his arms.

Max rolls her eyes to hide her smile, taking a load of books off the top of his pile and raising her eyebrows at him when he pants his thanks. “Sci-fi and fantasy are two different genres,” she says, turning back to the stacks to begin re-shelving the books in her arms. “Jesus, don't tell me this is all the fantasy and science fiction books  _combined_.”

“You complain that there aren't enough sci-fi books, you complain that there are too many,” Dustin teases, wrapping his arms around the remaining books like he's hugging them. “What do you want, woman?”

“I want a book I can actually read,” Max says, tucking the last of her stolen books into its rightful place on the shelf. Dustin laughs and starts rambling excitedly about the bland boy book he'd been trying to sell her on earlier, but as she reaches the end of the shelf a splash of color catches her eye and she turns away from him to look at the reading nook beside the rows of bookshelves. A thick book lays abandoned on one of the overstuffed armchairs, catching the dim library light with its reflective purple and blue cover, and she turns and pads over, interest peaked. She's always been a bit guilty of judging a book by its cover, but all of her favorite novels had advertised their creative fantasy worlds and exciting designs on eye-catching book sleeves and it seems to be an unspoken rule in the fantasy genre that the books with the most appealing covers have the most appealing worlds inside. With a quick look around to make sure she's not stealing the book out from underneath another patron, she picks up the thick book with interest, and her heart lifts when she sees the image of a teenage girl on the front cover.

“By Diana Wynn Jones,” she murmurs, turning the book over to scan the summary with heightened interest. The description, of course, is vague, but she's more curious about a new book than she has been since she moved to a small town with only one tiny library, and she opens the front cover with a flutter of excitement.

“What's that one?” Dustin's voice breaks through the new world creeping over her mind like the vines on the front cover of the book, and she jumps so high she almost falls off of the arm of the chair she seems to have perched on without noticing. Dustin laughs good-naturedly at her surprise, and subsequent one-fingered response, taking the book out of her hands to turn it over with scientific curiosity. “Never heard of it. Have you read it before?”

“No,” Max says, rising from the chair to throw an arm around his shoulders. “Which is heartening, because I was starting to think that I've heard of every book in the world if this library is any indication.”

Dustin laughs, cradling the book in his arms as they start to walk back into the stacks. “You hadn't heard of literally any of my recommendations.”

“That's because I only read good books, Dustin,” Max says mock-seriously, and returns his playful shove with one of her own. Before they can get into a true shoving match a librarian shushes them harshly, and they have to press books against their faces to hide their giggles.

Max doesn't remember to take the book back from Dustin until he hands it to her from the middle of his library-designated stack of four books when they part ways in front of the library, he on his bike and she on her skateboard. She fumbles with it a bit awkwardly before tucking it against her chest and kicking off on her board across the pavement, excited that she'd found a book she wanted to read, even if she might not love it as much as the books she could have found in California.

\---

She loves the book.

She devours it in one night, flopping back onto the headboard with a satisfied sigh after reading the last sentence to see with surprise that the sun rising outside of her window. The book has everything she'd been complaining to Dustin that she wanted – an interesting main character, an immersive fantasy world, a story full of terror and suspense that had kept her interest page after page – and she finds herself opening the book randomly to reread different sections, not yet ready to leave the world behind. She's flipping through the pages, trying to find a particular scene she wants to experience again, when she fumbles in her sleepiness and the book falls open to the back cover with a list of the author's other publications, and she notices the little yellow library due date card poking out of the pocket. Normally she wouldn't take any notice, but there's only one name scrawled beneath Dustin's in untidy writing, and she nudges the card up and out of the pocket to see if the person was a jerk and decided to take up two lines to write their last name. They hadn't, which is even more strange – even in a small town, didn't the library need to know where their books were? - and she rolls her eyes at this Jane, with her joined-up writing which somehow manages to be careful and messy at the same time. She pokes the card back into the pocket and snuggles down into her bed, forgetting about Jane as soon as she flips the pages to begin searching for the scene she'd wanted to read again.

After a quick nap she boards over to the library with her backpack to sign out every book by Diana Wynn Jones. The library doesn't have most of them, and some of the ones they do have are checked out, but she takes what she can get and speeds home to start reading. Each book is better than the last, full of brilliant female characters and terrifying creatures and worlds so unique and diverse Max can hardly believe the books are by the same person, and she's so excited she races over to Dustin's house to show them to him before she's read through all of the books she's checked out. She dumps the books she's finished onto his lap, threatening him in creative ways she's gotten from her favorite horror films over the years if he takes too long with them and gets her fined, and she can hardly wait the few days it takes her to finish the last novel before she finally lets herself go back to the library.

“Do you have any recommendations for books similar to these?” she asks the librarian as she's checking the books back in.

The librarian smiles at her and tells her to wait as she stamps the library due date cards. As Max watches her impatiently she notices that now-familiar untidy scrawl, and she sees that Jane Last-Name-Redacted has checked out all four books before her, signing her name in each one like she's Madonna and only needs one name. She raises her eyebrows, a bit more surprised at the coincidence than the fact that the librarian doesn't blink an eye at the unfinished paperwork, but the older woman stacks the books neatly on a cart behind the desk and beckons her towards the stacks, and she forgets about the mysterious name once more.

Jane doesn't seem to want to let her forget, however; every book she signs out under the librarian's insistence has the single name written on the due date card. Max loves all of the books, of course, but she finds herself flipping to the end of the books more than once after she's done rereading them to examine Jane's name on the library card. The mysterious Jane seems to enjoy the same kinds of books Max does, and the fact that Max has found her name several times on a card for the same book seems to means she devours her favorites over and over in the same way Max does, too. It's intriguing, like just missing a friend when they leave a room at the same time you enter, and she feels a bit guilty for her early assumption of pretentiousness, even though Jane will never know about it.

Dustin, who is as giddily enthusiastic about the books as Max is, frowns pensively when she asks him if he recognizes the name. “There's a couple of Janes in our grade,” he points out as they walk up the steps of the library together. “It's a pretty common name. I don't really know any of them very well. You don't recognize the handwriting?”

“No,” Max says, chewing her fingernail as she realizes how creepy the thought is when she hears it in someone else's voice. “I just thought – you don't know any Janes at school who are into fantasy?”

“It is my fantasy to know a Jane who is into fantasy,” Dustin says wistfully, and ducks away from her swinging fist to open the door for her with a laugh.

She starts checking the due date cards before she reads the books, searching for Jane's name before she commits to reading. She's come to see Jane's signature as a glowing recommendation, a stamp of approval for books that are worth falling in love with, and she finds she starts to get a flutter of anticipation every time she finds the other girl's name scribbled in one of the books the librarian offers her. As the summer stretches on Jane's impeccable taste in books continues uncontested, and Max finds herself wondering what Jane had thought of certain passages while she's reading, whether the other girl enjoys the same parts of the story that Max does, whether she would agree when Max finds other sections boring or unnecessary or out of character. The more books Max finds she has in common with Jane, the more she's dying to know who her mysterious benefactor is, and how she finds these novels and gets to them just before Max does. Jane's opinion has become important to her from the simple act of writing her name on due date cards in the back of library books, and with every new book or series or world she gets to fall in love with because of Jane's signature she finds herself more curious about the girl who is making her summer better than she could have imagined it would ever be, and who, realistically, probably doesn't even know she exists, since she always seems to be one step ahead of Max every time.

\---

The librarian is smiling apologetically before she even opens her mouth. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's not in yet.”

Max huffs out a puff of air, trying to keep the disappointment off of her face as she leans against the front desk. She's been waiting on the next book in a new series for what feels like months, even though it can't have been more than a week, but it had been signed out before she'd gotten to it and she's waiting for it to be returned. She's had a surprising amount of luck with books so far this summer, considering it's such a small library that she would be surprised if they had multiple copies of the same book, but she can't help but be annoyed with the patron who's taking so long with her book when she had blazed through the previous entry in the series in a day. “Okay, well, let me know,” she says, even though she has the book on hold and the librarian already knows to call when it comes in. “You don't have any ideas for me in the meantime, do you?”

The librarian opens her mouth, but her gaze darts to something behind Max and her eyes light up behind her horn-rimmed reading glasses. “Well, good timing, my dear. Are you all done with your books?”

Max looks over her shoulder to see a girl her age queued behind her, staring at the librarian like a deer in headlights. Her lips part silently as her huge dark eyes dart from the librarian to Max, and Max smiles at her, trying to sort her face into a can-you-believe-this-grown-up look since the stranger seems just as confused as she is about the librarian ignoring Max mid-sentence. The girl blushes a faint pink and looks quickly back at the woman behind the desk, and Max shrugs and shuffles a bit to the side; she's good at knowing when she's being dismissed.

“Yes,” the girl answers the librarian, and pads around Max up to the desk. Her voice is soft, like she breathes the word more than says it, and Max gets the impression that she's not just lowering her voice because she's in a library. “I have all of them.”

“Well, good, because this young lady was just waiting for one of them,” the librarian smiles, and Max realizes, with an inward eyeroll at herself, that this was why the librarian had ignored her abruptly for the other girl. “I'll just sign them in, and you can take it home with you, Max. Jane, may I have the books?”

Max's heart starts pounding so wildly in her chest that her ears throb with it, and she stands up ramrod straight as the other girl leans over to sort through her messenger bag. “Jane?” Max blurts out before she can stop herself.

Those wide brown eyes dart over to meet hers, and her rosy cheeks heat up again. “Yes?” she says curiously.

“Oh, I just -” Her words die on her floundering lips, because what had she been expecting to say?  _Hi, I'm Max, I've been stalking you through your literary preferences all summer and I really care about what you think even though we've never met before. Want to be friends?_ She envies Jane's demure little blush as her whole body heats up with her embarrassment, and she breaks their eye contact, dropping her gaze desperately to the librarian's hands as she stamps Jane's returned books. She sees the familiar signature in the open book, and her stomach swoops as she blushes so feverishly she feels sweat start to bead at her hairline; there was no doubt this this was the Jane, her Jane, and she furiously curses herself for not even considering what she would say in this scenario when she's been daydreaming about meeting Jane for weeks. “You like fantasy adventure novels?” she manages, and tries not to wince outwardly.

“Yes,” Jane says. Her voice is still curious, no hint of judgment or concern about Max's absolute weirdness in her tone, and Max's stomach twitches anxiously as she feels the other girl's steady gaze on her flushing face.

“Yeah, I, uh, I saw your name on some of the books I checked out,” Max says, and risks looking up to meet Jane's eyes. She's standing closer than Max is expecting, and Max has a passing thought about how long her eyelashes are when their gazes lock. “Just on the good ones, which is why I remembered it,” she adds, as if that makes it any less weird. “Should have figured you had the book I was waiting for.” She tries a small smile.

“Which books?” Jane says in her quiet voice. She tilts her head, owl-like, but her eyes are alight with curiosity.

Max swallows. “A bunch,” she says, which is an understatement. “The Time Quintet was probably my favorite.”

Jane lights up, her slightly-hunched posture rolling back to give her a surprising couple of centimeters on Max as she brightens with excitement. "Meg is my favorite," she gushes.

Her earnest enthusiasm is contagious, and Max finds herself giving her an equally-bright grin before the librarian distracts her by sliding the book she's been waiting for into her line of vision. "Here you are, dear," the older woman says. "Let me know if you still need any help with finding more books."

"Thanks," Max says without looking at her. Jane is still smiling at her, brown eyes shy even as they hold her gaze with bright interest, and she dizzily reaches for the book on the desk without breaking their eye contact. "Uh, hey, what did you think of the Time series switching to Charles as the main focus in the last book?"

Jane makes a face, soft brown curls tumbling into her eyes as she shifts her weight to one hip. "Stupid."

Max laughs, palms sweating as she shifts the book in her arm to hold out her hand. "I'm Max," she says with a smile.

Jane smiles back, one side of her mouth quirking up more than the other, and she reaches out to shake Max's sweaty hand. Her hand is soft, cool against Max's despite the hot afternoon, and Max feels her heart flutter with the excitement she's come to associate with seeing Jane's name in a book she hasn't read. "I saved the best reading couch, right by the window," she says conspiratorially. "Uh, you want to come sit?"

Jane nods, dark eyes smiling almost as hopefully as Max feels, and they turn together towards the bookshelves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 1984 version of meeting your Insta crush ashglshgjfl;dl thanks so much for the prompt gayforjane, I hope you enjoyed it!!!<3

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the older wlw just living your lives, it's literally the most healing thing just to be around you and see that it's a real, viable option to have a happy ending as a lesbian!!! More prompts coming soon, it means so much to me that anyone's reading something I wrote!!!<3


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